God Completely Saves
Well can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of grace in
a single instant. Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believed the
old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did not see the grace of
God. When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and
though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do
not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and
hour when first I received those truths in my own soul—when they were, as John
Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt
that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man—that I had made progress
in Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth
of God. One week-night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not
thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought
struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did
you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I
should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my
mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How
came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to
read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a
moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of
my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that
doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant
confession, "I ascribe my change wholly to God." C H Spurgeon